Value v/s price

Why do we believe what the world says about us?  It's part of our conditioning, our state, I guess.  At some point, hopefully, we find a need to search for the truth of who we are.  In this time of corporate thieves, greedy CEOs, banks we can't trust and the diving economy we find ourselves struggling for security and certainty.  Living in a culture that says what we buy identifies us only takes us further from the truth.  Believing in a cultural paradigm of consumerism and materialism is insanity.  It's living an insane life.  A life cut off from truth and beauty and sincerity.  And maybe worst of all is how we lie to each other and ourselves to reinforce that insanity by claiming 'rightness' against the rest of the world and, sadly, spiritual truths.  We are tormented in America by a demon named Wanting.  We want what we really don't want and don't want what we truly do.  The wanting is for stuff, power and status.  What we truly want, but deny it till the end, is to be loved by a Love that is so consuming we will never want for anything more. But if we admit that too early in life or too fully in culture then we have nothing to chase.  No goals to aspire toward and no adventures, challenges or people to conquer.  Yet, having said that, I believe, and perhaps it can be drawn out in some logical pattern, that there runs a small stream, at times maybe even a trickle, of goodness and pure intention.  It refuses to dry up or to backup like a swamp but keeps moving, like time, toward the inevitable All in All that awaits all things.  It isn't Grace itself, per se, but one of Grace's many tools she uses to move us ever higher despite the worst of what we can manage to do or want to do.  If we wake up to who we truly are now then, for us, the stream becomes a river of life and we can ride upon it, willingly, deeper into truth and joy.